Site Mobile Navigation

Bruce Surtees, Oscar-Nominated Cinematographer, Dies at 74

Bruce Surtees, an Oscar-nominated cinematographer known as the Prince of Darkness for his skill at summoning sharply etched figures from the inky depths of prisons, nightclubs and other inhospitably lighted places, died on Thursday in Carmel, Calif. He was 74.

The cause was complications of diabetes, his wife, Carol, said.

Known in particular for his long association with Clint Eastwood, Mr. Surtees (pronounced sur-TEEZ) shot more than a dozen films in which Mr. Eastwood starred. Many of these were also directed by Mr. Eastwood, including “Play Misty for Me” (1971), his first feature as a director; “High Plains Drifter” (1973); “The Outlaw Josey Wales” (1976); and “Sudden Impact” (1983), the fourth Dirty Harry movie.

Mr. Surtees dealt in shadows. Through his nuanced, often minimal use of lighting on the set, he meticulously conjured the stark contrast of lights and darks on the screen that he and his directors often sought.

“He was fearless,” Mr. Eastwood said in a telephone interview on Tuesday. “He wasn’t afraid to give you sketchy lighting if you asked for it. He didn’t believe in flat light or just bright, ‘Rexall drugstore’ lighting, which a lot of times you can get if you get somebody that isn’t very imaginative.”

Mr. Surtees’s earliest work as a cinematographer was for the director Don Siegel, for whom he shot “Dirty Harry” (1971) and “Escape From Alcatraz” (1979), both starring Mr. Eastwood, and “The Shootist” (1976), starring John Wayne.

He had previously been a camera operator whose work included Mr. Siegel’s pictures “Coogan’s Bluff” (1968) and “Two Mules for Sister Sara” (1970) before he was named the cinematographer on “The Beguiled” (1971), a Civil War drama directed by Mr. Siegel and starring Mr. Eastwood and Geraldine Page.

Mr. Surtees earned an Academy Award nomination for his work on “Lenny” (1974), a biopic about Lenny Bruce starring Dustin Hoffman that was shot in black and white at the request of its director, Bob Fosse. In Mr. Surtees’s hands, the finished film looked like a living photograph by Weegee. (The Oscar went to Fred Koenekamp and Joseph Biroc for “The Towering Inferno.”)

Cinematography was part of Mr. Surtees’s genetic endowment. His father, Robert Surtees, was a cinematographer who won Oscars for “King Solomon’s Mines” (1950), “The Bad and the Beautiful” (1952) and “Ben-Hur” (1959). The younger Mr. Surtees, born in Los Angeles on Aug. 3, 1937, was named Bruce Mohr Powell Surtees in honor of his father’s mentor Hal Mohr, also an esteemed cinematographer.

Mr. Surtees’s first marriage, to Judy Rucker, as she is now known, ended in divorce. Besides his wife, the former Carol Buby, whom he married in 1979 in Seoul while on location for “Inchon” (1981), directed by Terence Young and starring Laurence Olivier, he is survived by a daughter from his first marriage, Suzanne Surtees; a brother, Tom; and a sister, Nancy.

Mr. Surtees, who lived in Carmel, was also the cinematographer for “White Dog,” Samuel Fuller’s controversial film about a dog trained to attack black people. Made in 1982, it was not officially released — on DVD — until 2008 because of the studio’s fears that it was inflammatory. (The film, which stars Kristy McNichol, Paul Winfield and Burl Ives, is ardently anti-racist.)

In the 1990s and afterward Mr. Surtees shot several television movies, including “Dash and Lilly” (1999), starring Sam Shepard and Judy Davis as Dashiell Hammett and Lillian Hellman, for which he received an Emmy nomination.

Mr. Surtees brought to his work not only an impeccable eye but also something directors found just as valuable: a gift for frugal improvisation.

“He was perfect for me, because we didn’t have very big budgets in those days,” Mr. Eastwood said on Tuesday, recalling his early directorial outings. “He’d make dollies by towing a blanket across the floor with the cameraman sitting on it.”

A picture last Sunday with an obituary of the cinematographer Bruce Surtees was published in error. The photograph, supplied by Getty Images with incorrect caption information, shows Clint Eastwood on the set of his film “High Plains Drifter” with James Fargo, the assistant director; it does not show Mr. Eastwood with Mr. Surtees, the director of photography.

A version of this article appears in print on March 4, 2012, on Page A24 of the New York edition with the headline: Bruce Surtees, 74, Who Shot Films With Nuanced Lighting. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe